Remedy
by Tolakasa
Summary: AU for 1.22 Devil's Trap. In the middle of the showdown, Sam has a vision.


_****__**Remedy**_

Sam has a vision while he's standing there, holding a magical gun on his possessed father, torn between Dad's orders and Dean's begging. It's not like the normal visions. It doesn't charge into his head and announce its presence with thundering pain. It slithers in, insinuates itself silently, like it's always been there, watching, waiting for that perfect opportunity.

He sees it all in that moment: Semi versus Impala. Deals. Deaths. Resurrections. Eternally running from mortal authorities. The loss of old friends. The loss of friends they haven't met yet. Angels and demons wrangling over their lives, their souls, their bodies. Monsters worse than either, swallowing the world in a film of black ooze.

He suffers an eternity in that fraction of a second. Sees the road bought with a heartbeat's weakness. Sees the choice that isn't.

"No," he whispers.

Utter despair crosses John Winchester's face as he misunderstands, an instant before the Colt's final bullet tears into his brain, killing man and demon.

Nothing happens on the road to the hospital, despite the recklessness of Sam's driving, pedal to the floor, eyes stinging from tears and kerosene fumes, one hand on the wheel, the other smashing a wad of their wardrobe against the gashes in Dean's gut. There's no other traffic at all.

Dean loses his spleen, a kidney, part of a lung, some intestines, and all memory of the last two days. In the first eight hours in the hospital, he receives enough blood to fill two people, nearly the county's whole supply, before the surgeons finally find that last nicked vessel and stop the bleeding. There's nerve damage in his left leg, meaning part of it is permanently numb and he'll never walk without a limp. One of those hits against the wall was the proverbial straw, the blow to the head that defeated even a Winchester skull, leaving permanent brain damage. He's still Dean, still smarter than he pretends to be, still capable of doing so much more than he wants to admit, but he'll never be as quick, in thought or in deed, as he once was. He'll never be safe to hunt again—not by himself, not with backup. Not ever.

He's grieving, of course, for their father, for the only life he ever really knew. But he's alive, and his grief is ameliorated by knowing they finally have their vengeance.

Sam grieves too, in his own way—for Dad, for what Dean's lost. But Sam's grief is eased by knowing what will now never happen.

It's the only grief he's ever known that carried no guilt.

When Dean asks, Sam tells him that the demon's death-throes knocked over a lantern, that it was all he could do to get Dean out of that dried-out firetrap before the flames swallowed them too, that Dean was bleeding out and Sam couldn't take the time to go back or he would've had two to bury.

Dean understands. The living take precedence over the dead. And he knows, deep where he'll never admit it, that even if Dad was still alive, if Sam had to choose between Dean and their father, he'd choose Dean, every time.

Only part of Sam's story is a lie. He hopes it's the last. Dean has forgotten everything about those two days, so he assumes that it was the demon that killed their father, that Sam managed, somehow, to accomplish a miracle in time to save Dean. He never asks for details.

Sam has the lie ready and waiting anyway—an excellent tale, really, about how the demon killed Dad and the surge of rage and grief unleashed Sam's powers, how between those and the Colt, he managed to immobilize the demon long enough to kill it. While Dean is lying in a hospital bed, Sam must rehearse that final lie a thousand times, working out the holes in the story, making his delivery believable.

Dean would never kill someone he loved because of a vision.

Fire covers a multitude of sins.

Dean never is sure when he lost his lucky lighter. He assumes it fell out of his jacket, maybe during the fight he no longer remembers, or was stolen at the hospital. It's not until he's out of the hospital and Sam's driving to Palo Alto—on Dean's insistence (_time to get back to the normal life, Sammy, gotta finish that degree, maybe I'll even crack some books and get me one_)—that he even notices it's missing. It's a moment's distraction, and then Dean shrugs and never mentions it again. It's part of another life now.

Sam never has to tell the final lie.

_**the end**_


End file.
